Jan Van Riel

In the early 1990s, after founding a Belgian software distributor called Wave Research, Jan Van Riel began tackling electronic software distribution. While that business never materialized, software he developed, called EZ-Attach, made him an early pioneer of content-addressable storage and, eventually, one of the innovators behind EMC’s Centera, the fixed-content storage array that got the industry thinking about new ways to meet compliance issues.

EZ-Attach, which treated files like an object, enabled clients to upload big files to Wave Research’s Internet site for distribution to multiple users. Riel changed his company’s name to FilePool in 1998, and in May 1999 approached EMC about investing in his storage service provider business. EMC initially wasn’t interested, ironically suggesting Riel take his case to document management vendor FileNet. A year later, though, EMC took a second look and bought FilePool for its technology.

Van Riel, 45, now as director of technology for EMC’s Centera division, is looking for new applications of the technology, such as downloading photos directly from camera phones. “If you have valuable content, like a photograph, you want to know it is stored and safe,” he said. “But you don’t care where. You don’t want to know if it is on this PC or that CD. You just want to take the picture and look at it. [Content-addressable storage] is very well-suited as an enabling technology.”